IT Outsourcing Industry - Statistics & Facts

Overall, many different tasks or services can be outsourced. Outsourced IT services may include programming and application development or technical support. In fact, it is possible to outsource entire IT departments, often to large companies that specialize in and house expertise to manage these responsibilities. This allows organizations to reduce operational costs and focus on their core tasks.

Market segments and size

Figures estimating the market size of IT outsourcing vary depending on how the source defines “outsourcing” and what kind of industries, services, and segments are included. Statista's Technology Market Outlook (TMO) divides the IT outsourcing industry into administration outsourcing, application outsourcing, web hosting, and other IT outsourcing. In total, these segments are forecast to account for a combined revenue of 351 billion U.S. dollars in 2021. Importantly, services such as cloud computing and its sub-segments, such as software as a service (SaaS) are adjacent services but are considered part of the core service of IT outsourcing.

Spending in the overall outsourcing industry is the highest within the Americas region, followed by the EMEA and Asia Pacific regions. Information technology outsourcing makes up the largest share of the industry, as technology or IT consulting is the most common type of work sold by professional services organizations.

Current and future trends in outsourcing

Overall, digital transformation efforts accelerate IT outsourcing. A major aspect of this is cloud computing, as its individual segments infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and SaaS provide some of the ITO outsourcing services more conveniently and at a lower cost. Accordingly, the total contract value of the global “As-a-service” market has now exceeded several tens of billion U.S. dollars annually.

Automation is among the trends shaping the IT outsourcing landscape because it is supplementing or replacing traditional outsourcing services. This is illustrated by a considerable number of organizations worldwide expecting that automation as a service delivery model will increase in the future. Other noteworthy developments are advancements in chatbots and blockchain technology, as well as artificial intelligence and machine learning to avoid errors and enhance workflow productivity, for example.

This text provides general information. Statista assumes no liability for the information given being complete or correct. Due to varying update cycles, statistics can display more up-to-date data than referenced in the text.